March 2017 – Education & Teacher Conferences

Andrew Watson

March-30-2017

Autism Speaks…about Genes

Some time ago, I linked to an article about varieties of ADHD diagnoses. A recent article in Medical News Today makes a similar point about autism.

From one perspective, we can be tempted to say that someone either does or does not have autism.

From another perspective, that’s a bit like saying some people are taller than 5’10” whereas some aren’t; that statement is true, but it misses MANY crucial complexities. After all, within that category, some people are 5’11”, and others are 6’11”.

There are–in other words–meaningful differences within the category of people taller than 5’10”, and meaningful difference within the category of people who have autism.

In this recent article, researchers announce an additional 18 genes whose variants are associated with autism diagnoses — bringing the (current) total of such genetic variations to 61.

This finding tells us that differences in the presentation of autism may well result from underlying genetic differences that predispose people to autism in the first place. As is always true with complex cognitive functions, we should expect varied plausible causes, and expect several different manifestations.

No two brains are identical; no two diagnoses are identical; no two people are identical. As teachers, we want to understand groups and categories, but we always work with individuals.

Andrew Watson

March-28-2017

Brain Wandering

We’ve posted quite frequently about mind-wandering on this blog (here, here, and here — to pick just a few). This post introduces a comprehensive article about the brain activity that correlates with various mind-wandering states.

As John Leiff (M.D.) notes, when you just lie still and think about nothing in particular, your brain isn’t quiet; a well-defined set of neural networks is firing. This group is called the Default Mode Network (DMN, or DN), and it has gotten a lot of research love in recent years.

Lieff’s article explores — in detail — the relationships between different parts of the DN and different kinds of mind-wandering and meditation.

This comprehensive review doesn’t offer any immediate teaching implications. However — and this is a big however — if you’re interested in mindfulness, and want to use brain research to make you case to your admin team, you will benefit from knowing the information that Lieff offers you here.

Early Education Program Evaluation: “Differential Susceptibility” to Success

Lindsay Clements

March-26-2017

Early Education Program Evaluation: “Differential Susceptibility” to Success

Show me the Money

As most parents, teachers, and education policy folks know well, early childhood education is expensive. Whether federally-funded, state-funded, or family-funded, preschool and structured early care generally operate on a pretty tight budget. They also generally operate on pretty high hopes: academic achievement, personal growth, reduced delinquency, and much more.

And they should! As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “there is no knowledge that is not power.” We certainly need to maintain high expectations for youth to get the most out of their academic careers. As well, we should expect the programs that we invest in to set children up for the success that they promise.

Show us the Results

So what happens when we don’t see those hopes result in program outcome data; in particular, at the state- and federally-funded program level?

Do we launch an investigation into what went wrong?
Do we take the money away?
Do we blame the teachers, or parents, or school districts?

The “what now?” of underwhelming achievement is a challenging road to venture down. For some context, check out my colleague Austin’s recent blog post regarding a newly published study looking at the infamous fadeout effects in Head Start preschools.

Unfortunately, questions of whom to blame have dominated much of the “what now?” conversation over the years. Yet some studies, like the one Austin discussed, are trending in a new, positive direction for developmental and educational research alike.

Let’s Re-think ‘Results’

This new genre of studies does two things. First, it looks at such factors as fidelity to a particular program’s plan. Let’s take Head Start as an example. Researchers will ask: how well and how often are Head Start’s specialized strategies actually being implemented in classrooms?

Second, and most important, these studies don’t stop there. Instead, they go on to broaden the idea of an outcome to include measures of mental health and social growth, and the image of a learning environment to include the home and child care centers.

Broadening what we think achievement is, and where we think learning happens, is an important movement. Of course, many developmental psychologists have been advocating for this broadening for years. Social psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner, for example, began studying ways in which intra- and inter-person factors affect learning back in the 1970’s. But the merging of research questions that focus on individual context with research questions that focus on school program evaluation is an exciting new empirical endeavor.

Differential Susceptibility

An endeavor that we stand to gain a lot from. One way that these new context+program evaluation research questions are making an impact is in studies of early achievement and differential susceptibility (DS).

DS is a theoretical model that aims to understand why some things affect some people differently. In developmental research, DS refers to children who are more behaviorally or biologically reactive to stimuli and, as a result, more affected by both positive and negative environments. [1]

Study 1

Let’s look at a longitudinal study conducted by researchers at Birkbeck University of London. [2] They investigated the effects of early rearing contexts on children of different temperaments. The following data was collected from 1,364 families:

predictive measures

parents reported the temperament of their child at 6 months (general mood, how often they engage in play behavior, how well they transition to a babysitter, etc.);
parenting quality (i.e. maternal sensitivity) was assessed at 6 and 54 months during laboratory and home observations;
quality of child care (e.g. daycare) was assessed at 6, 15, 24, 36, and 54 months via observation

outcome measures

academic achievement, behavior problems, teacher-child conflict, academic work habits, and socio-emotional functioning were assessed regularly between 54 months and 6th grade

Results showed that children who had a difficult temperament in infancy were more likely than children who didn’t to benefit from good parenting and high-quality childcare. They also suffered more from negative parenting and low-quality child care.

Most pronounced was the finding of differential effects for child care quality. Here, high quality care fostered fewer behavior problems, less teacher-child conflict, and better reading skills while low quality care fostered the opposite — but, only for those children who had a difficult temperament.

The takeaway: children that had a difficult temperament in infancy were differentially susceptible to quality of parenting and child care. For them, the good was extra good, and the bad was extra bad.

Study 2

Researchers at Stanford University engaged high- and low-income kindergartners in activities designed to elicit physiological reactivity (measured by the amount of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva). [3] In other words, the children completed activities that were difficult and kind of frustrating. They also completed a battery of executive function assessments.

It turns out that children who displayed higher reactivity (more cortisol) during the activities were more susceptible to their family’s income. That is, family income was significantly associated with children’s EF skills — but only for those children with high cortisol response. Highly reactive children had higher EF skills if their family had a higher income, but lower EF skills if their family was lower income.

The takeaway: children that were highly reactive when faced with challenging activities were differentially susceptible to their family’s resources. Their EF was particularly strong if their family had high income, yet particularly weak if their family had a lower income.

Evaluating Program Evaluation

How is being mindful of phenomena like differential susceptibility helpful when we receive the news that children made no special long-term gains after being enrolled in a publicly-funded program?

First, we should recognize that we may have set ourselves up for some disappointment at the outset if we assumed that all children would be equally susceptible to the positive effects of home or school interventions.

Of course, at school entry, we don’t necessarily know which students are arriving with difficult temperaments. Or whether their child care environment has exacerbated or buffered it. Which means that we’re also not going to be able (practically or ethically) to separate students by level of disadvantage in order to decide which program they should be enrolled in. So let’s just accept that we’re going to see some variation in individual outcomes.

Let’s also remind ourselves that variation is not necessarily reflective of an ineffective program. At Head Start, for example, it is probably safe to speculate that most families are juggling some amount of stress, financial instability, and social tension. And according to the DS model, students who are predisposed to be highly reactive will be hit hardest by these things. As a result, reactivity is probably going to interfere with their reaching what we define as success. But DS also tells us that they have the most to gain from a nurturing, consistent environment.

So let’s not take the money away. Let’s hold off on passing the blame around. And let’s not refer to these data as something going “wrong”. Let’s instead look at the students who continue to struggle and ask what contextual factors — such as a child’s weak self-regulation skills and their parent’s inability to address it in the way their teacher wants because they work two jobs — are at play.

I’m no gambler, but if we can figure those things out, and commit to doing something about them, then I say we double-down when it comes to funding.

References

Ellis, B. J., Boyce, W. T., Belsky, J., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2011). Differential susceptibility to the environment: An evolutionary–neurodevelopmental theory. Development and Psychopathology, 23, 7–28. doi:10.1017/S0954579410000611 [link]

Pluess, M., & Belsky, J. (2010). Differential susceptibility to parenting and quality child care. Developmental Psychology, 46, 379-390. [link]

Obradovic, J., Portilla, X. A., & Ballard, P. J. (2015). Biological sensitivity to family income: Differential effects on early executive functioning. Child Development, 87(2), 374-384. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12475 [link]

The Misleading Headline of the Week…and What to Do About It

Andrew Watson

March-25-2017

The Misleading Headline of the Week…and What to Do About It

Scientific American Mind has entitled this brief piece “Too Much Emotional Intelligence is a Bad Thing.”

Given the content of the article — and common sense — a more accurate title would be “In very particular circumstances, the ability to read others’ emotions well might raise cortisol levels for some people while they speak in public.”

That alternate title isn’t as clickable…but, it also doesn’t substantially misstate the point of the research it summarizes.

The Larger Point

Even reputable magazines can overstate researchers’ conclusions — especially in headlines. For this reason, we should always look closely at the particulars of any research paradigm before we make decisions about relying on an article.

For example: if I wanted readers to click on a headline, I might summarize Ina Dobler’s study this way:

“Asking Students to Remember Causes Them to Forget!”

Believe it or not, “retrieval-induced forgetting” is a thing, and — in particular circumstances — might be a problem in classrooms.

(I wrote about retrieval-induced forgetting last year; you can read that article here.)

However, as you know if you’ve attended recent LaTB conferences; or read Scott’s or Ian’s entries on this blog; or read make it stick by Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel; or How We Learn by Benedict Carey, asking students to generate answers to questions is most often a highly beneficial way to help them consolidate memories.

In other words, my headline — by sloppily overgeneralizing Dobler’s conclusions — could badly mislead casual readers.

To quote a recent Scientific American headline: “Overreliance on Magazine Headlines is a Bad Thing…”

Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-about-me World by Michele Borba

Rebecca Gotlieb

March-24-2017

Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-about-me World by Michele Borba

Screen Shot 2017-03-24 at 11.38.12 AM Children and adolescents with greater empathy tend to be happier, more successful, more resilient, and more critical in their thinking. Dr. Michele Borba, educational psychologist and psychology expert on several TV programs, argues in Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in our All-About-Me World that we can help students accrue the “empathy advantage” by helping them develop 9 key habits to strengthen and utilize empathy. Given that today’s youngest generation is more self-absorbed than previous ones and is experiencing high rates of bullying, cheating, and mental health issues, it is critically important to help this generation understand the feelings and thoughts of other people, even when those other people are very different from oneself. This book will appeal to parents and educators, who are interested in fostering empathy, not only to raise kind children, but also to raise satisfied and successful ones.

Emotional literacy, or the ability to read cues of others’ emotional states, has been associated with better school performance. Skilled perspective-taking is associated with greater popularity. Kids and teenagers’ heavy digital media use (on average almost eight hours a day) can undermine the development of emotional literacy. Borba suggests that parents model appropriate use of technology, and have times when kids don’t use technology. She suggests also expressing feelings, teaching children a large vocabulary of emotional words, reading books and news stories that make them think about others’ feelings and situations, befriending a diverse group of people, and practicing reading emotions and taking perspective by giving children the opportunity to care for others.

Borba argues also for the importance of developing strong moral identities and moral imaginative abilities. She shows that the majority of today’s teenagers value their personal happiness over their being a good person, and parents contribute to teenagers’ under-valuing moral goodness by rarely praising character, even as they over-praise other accomplishments. Borba suggests parents teach children to value being the type of person who cares about others by explicating the family’s core values, modeling altruism, debating moral issues, reading fiction, and pausing to ask “what if” questions while reading.

Self-regulation, teamwork, and practicing kindness are three skills that help kids utilize their empathy abilities. Drawing on the work of Walter Mischel (reviewed here), Borba shows that self-regulatory abilities are associated with several important professional and health-related life outcomes. Parents and teachers can help by modeling calmness, teaching breathing exercises, and creating quiet spaces. Borba states that teamwork and collaboration make kids happier, healthier, and better academic performers, yet opportunities to spontaneously engage in collaboration are decreasing due to limited unstructured play time and the elimination of recess.

To help students learn to be team players, it is important for kids to see how they are similar to other people and see their success as linked to others’ success. Parents and teachers can praise teamwork above individual performance. To help kids practice kindness, the most important first step is to do something kind because doing one kind deed makes people more likely to do another, according to Borba. Kids should know that their parents value their being kind people. Parents can model kindness for their kids. They can help their children brainstorm ways to do kind things and then do those kind acts together. Borba reminds us that many kind gestures (e.g., giving a sincere compliment) do not cost a dime.

Finally, to experience the transformational power of empathy, children need moral courage and the ability to act as an altruistic leader. They need to develop an internal drive that compels them to help those others, even when they might experience repercussions for doing so. They also need to actively defend their values. Often time kids fail to demonstrate moral courage (e.g., in the face of bullying) because they feel powerless, they are unsure about whether intervening is appropriate, they are concerned about peers’ reactions, they think someone else will address the issue, or they are crippled by their feelings for a victim’s plight. Parents can help children develop moral courage and the ability to lead by modeling moral action, exposing children to heroes who can inspire them, rehearsing with kids what they might do if faced with a moral challenge, teaching kids that their ability to empathize can grow with time, and highlighting for them the impact that their good deeds have on others. By valuing moral goodness parents counter-act popular culture messages that place supreme value on fame and materialism.

With Borba’s description of these 9 helpful empathy habits, stories that illuminate the value of each, an explanation of the science supporting the habits, and a list of creative and age-specific examples of how to foster them, parents can help their children receive the empathy advantage.

Borba, M. (2016). Unselfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-about-me World. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.

Political Affiliation and Trust in Science

Andrew Watson

March-22-2017

Political Affiliation and Trust in Science

Over at the Cultural Cognition Project, Dan Kahan has offered a fascinating post about the relationship between political beliefs and trust in science.

As we all know, party affiliation strongly aligns with beliefs about human causation of climate change. Whereas — according to graphs that Kahan has posted — something like 90% of those who are “very liberal” believe that humans have caused climate change, only 20% of those who are “very conservative” do.

Kahan’s question: does that political skew appear for other questions requiring scientific expertise?

The answer: NO.

For instance, liberals, moderates, and conservatives are all more than 75% confident that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks, and have confidence in the public health officials who make these decisions.

In another graph, Kahan shows that both liberals and conservatives hold the scientific community in very high regard. For liberals, it ranks #1 for institutional confidence ratings (above medicine, the military, and the Supreme Court…and way above television); for conservatives, it ranks #2 (behind the military, above medicine and the Supreme Court…and way above the press).

For teachers who want to use scientific data to inform teaching practice, Kahan’s post may well come as a great relief. If you’ve been worrying that your reliance on research might sound like a kind of political affiliation, you can rest easier knowing that most of us — liberals, moderates, conservatives — have a high degree confidence in scientists.

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

Guest Blogger

March-19-2017

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

[Editor’s note: this guest blogger piece is by Cindy Gadziala, Chairperson of Theology at Fontbonne Academy in Milton, MA.]

I am a veteran teacher, and yet sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all that I am supposed to be doing in my 21st century classroom.

The “wave of the future,” instructional technology—with its one-to-one initiatives, and Google platforms—offers many benefits: for example, individualized instruction, or applications that promote problem-solving skills. I have had students demonstrate their learning by creating electronic posters and comic strips. I have even sent them on a virtual archaeological dig!

But, there are days where classroom 102 becomes a battleground; and my enemy appears to be technology. As a Theology teacher I am supposed to love my enemy, but I need the best help I can get.

Enter — brain science!

Technology Problems: Working Memory and Attention

Psychology researchers are working diligently to understand how we get information “in and out” of our brains, and working memory is now understood as an essential gateway for learning. We also know that working memory is both precious and limited. [1]

Part of our challenge in the classroom is to avoid overloading a student’s working memory, thereby causing a catastrophic failure…those glazed looks and blank stares that send a chill through the fiber of any teacher’s being!

So, teachers can employ proactive strategies to reduce the strain on working memory to facilitate learning. For example: lots of new information, or too many instructions, can create working memory burdens for overtaxed students.

And yet, paradoxically, classroom technology can sometimes require students to master new material, and to follow all sorts of instructions.

Just as it might overwhelm working memory, technology can also distract students’ attention.

For example: I often project images from my iPad to help my students focus. And yet, when the projector times out and kicks over to a screen saver, the swirling colors and images can disorient the very students whom I was helping focus.

These kinds of problems intensify all my questions about use of technology in the classroom:

Should I be allowing students to take notes on their laptops and tablets?
What happens to working memory when a student clicks a tab to go someplace else?
How does this affect the working memory of the student seated next to the web surfer?

While I hope that I am creating brilliantly engaging lessons to minimize such distractions, I have my limits.

Enter — “the conundrum!.”

Technology Possibilities

One of the boasts of technology in the classroom has been that students can use their devices for efficient note taking, yet the well-known Mueller and Oppenheimer study [2] suggests that laptops make note-taking too easy. Counter-intuitively, this ease reduces cognitive processing, and thereby reduces learning. Between the risk of distraction and the reduction to learning I hear the cry go forth from teachers everywhere: Victory! Ban technological devices in the classroom!

While tempting, this is not the best response. (Remember, I am trying to love my enemy!)

I have seen kids take amazing notes on a laptop. Often, they work quite thoughtfully with information, creating their own visual representations and mind maps as they go. I do not want to take this beneficial tool away from them.

So, my task is to teach appropriate use of technological devices, build note-taking skills and…oh, by the way…teach content: all without overwhelming my students’ working memory.

I wanted to know: how can I make technology my ally in the classroom to accomplish all these objectives? I have found an option that may help teachers to reduce strain on working memory in class, and facilitate cognitive processing both in class and at home.

Enter — the Rocketbook.

Paper, Improved?

The Rocketbook is a notebook, made from acid free fine grain paper with a dot grid pattern , that combines the benefits of handwriting and technology.

Because the Rocketbook has QR codes built into its pages, students can take handwritten notes in class, and then use a cell phone app to upload notes into the cloud. (Rocketbook supports Google Drive and Evernote, for example.)

Symbols on each page can be assigned to different destination folders, and so students can upload work for multiple disciplines to distinct places in the cloud. Once their notes are uploaded, students can re-work them into a mind map or graphic organizer.

From a teacher’s perspective, Rocketbook’s combination of paper and technology provides many benefits:

I reduce the strain on working memory in class because no devices should be open when students are engaged in note taking. In this way, I also make my classroom management easier.
I increase their cognitive processing, because they are writing by hand.
I increase their touches with content, because they are re-organizing their notes into the cloud.
I can use my LMS and Google Drive in concert to make this process part of their homework. When students provide me with a link to their uploaded notes, I can see their work from class, provide feedback on their note taking, see how they are processing and reorganizing the information, and create the opportunity to correct misinformation or redirect them to concepts they missed.

Of course, all innovations include some downsides; in this case, I sacrifice teaching my students about appropriate use of their devices in the classroom.

(A unique feature of the Rocketbook is that when the notebook is full, you can zap it in the microwave; the ink disappears and you start all over!)

Choices, Choices

While I have used the Rocketbook myself and find it both functional and cost effective (under $40.00 for pens and notebook!), there are some other interesting options available that teachers and students could use in a similar fashion. (My thanks to Learning and the Brain tech guru Scott MacClintic for these suggestions.)

First, there is the LiveScribe Echo Pen by Anoto. There are several versions of this product and the functions increase with the price tag. (Average setup cost comes in around $200.00.) The premise here is that as you write your notes, the pen records what is being said in class. This recording allows students to sync notes with the audio, review what was said and expand, revise and reorganize material from class.

While the Echo Pen’s marketing is often directed to LD students, their tagline “write less, listen more” speaks to all learners. If students are coached on how best to use the tool, hearing class again combined with re-working the material could reap cognitive processing benefits.

Equil’s Smartpen 2, (coming in around $160.00) does not offer the audio feature, but it does not require special ink or paper either. When students take notes with a special Bluetooth-enabled pen, those notes appear both on the paper where they write and on a Bluetooth-linked tablet. Like the Rocketbook, in other words, it converts pen-and-paper notes into a laptop version—eliminating potential distractions from websites, advertisements, and Facebook.

In Sum…

While technology offers both challenges and benefits to students and teachers, it is clear to me that there are no magic bullet solutions with technology alone. Teachers cannot abdicate their role to technology. To use it effectively, we need to know how it affects learning and the brain. We must be all the more deliberate in our lesson planning, classroom management, and relationship building with our students.

We equally must inform the art of teaching with the science of the brain. When we start integrating instructional technology, brain science and good pedagogical practice, as teachers we provide truly great opportunities for student learning!

Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers question about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 1-10, doi: 10:1177/0956797614524581. [link]

Andrew Watson

March-17-2017

Using IQ Scores Thoughtfully

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Debates about the meaning and value of IQ have long raged; doubtless, they will continue to do so.

This article, by a scholar steeped in the field, argues that — even for those who see real benefit in focusing on IQ — it is essential to distinguish between fluid intelligence (the ability to solve new problems) and crystallized intelligence (knowledge already stored in long-term memory).

If you’ve read Todd Rose’s book The End of Average, you will remember that “talent is always jagged.” That is: two people who have the same IQ might nonetheless be very different thinkers — in part because their score might result from dramatically different combinations of fluid and crystallized subscores.

In short: even advocates for IQ see potential perils in misusing this well-known metric.

Debate: E-Readers and Reading Comprehension

Scott MacClintic

March-15-2017

Debate: E-Readers and Reading Comprehension

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[Editor’s note: Scott’s post is in response to this earlier article.]

Most times when I get asked about the e-reader debate, it is usually not a sincere question from a person who does not already hold a strong opinion on the matter. In these moments I am reminded of the expression “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!”

No matter how many studies I mention or which side of the issue I am trying to argue on behalf of, as soon as I provide a brief pause, I am confronted with “yeah, but…” and then the person proceeds to tell me why his/her long-held belief is the final word on the subject.

As for where I come down on the issue, I tend to defer to people who are way smarter than me on the subject — such as Daniel Willingham.

As Willingham concludes in his review of some of the literature on the subject, If the choice is read on a device or read on paper, I believe that the paper is still slightly in the lead if you are looking at straight up comprehension. The problem I have is that this shift to digital is really only a lateral move or a substitution situation, and perhaps not a wise one if you want improved student comprehension!

As a teacher, I choose to incorporate technology in the design of my lessons if I believe it is going to result in noticeable and definable modification or redefinition of the learning tasks and outcomes (SAMR model). The question I ask is “what will the use of this technology allow me or my students to do that previously could not have been accomplished?” If the answer is a “not much” then I do not bother to use the technology. The technology itself should not be the focus of the lesson; student learning must be front and center.

So…”to e-reader or not to e-reader” is actually not the question that we should be asking; rather, we should be asking “does this technology add transformative value to the learning experience for my students?” If we want to go even further, we should ask “How might I measure this value and know that my students are benefiting?”

Austin Matte

March-12-2017

Head Start: Right on Time

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“Children who grow up in poverty often exhibit delays in academic and social-emotional school readiness that undermine their school progress at kindergarten entry and initiate a lifelong trajectory of underachievement and underemployment.”

What a powerful concept — a lifelong trajectory of underachievement that is initiated by the time a child reaches kindergarten. Kindergarten! Most people are just aging out of childhood amnesia by this point, and already, a potentially lifelong trajectory has been established.

In a research article published last month, Karen Bierman and colleagues (2017) open with the line quoted above. They go on to mention that, in addition to the differences in academic and professional outcomes, there are also disparities in physical and mental health experienced by children growing up in poverty.

One focus of the study is a well-known problem regarding early childhood interventions: fadeout. Fadeout occurs when children show immediate gains in response to a given education program only for these gains to dissipate over time, leaving the children ostensibly no better off than those who did not participate in the program.

Such fadeout was found to be the case with the federally-funded Head Start program, which is also the focus of the Bierman study. Those who founded the Head Start program recognized the formative potential of the earliest years of life, though studies have found that the program does not live up to its potential. A 2012 federal impact study noted that Head Start “improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains, but had few impacts on children in kindergarten through 3rd grade“ (Puma, et al., 2012).

Another study assessing federal- and state-funded preschools found the instructional quality of such institutions to be “especially problematic” (Early, et al., 2005). Policy-makers have cited such research to back their argument that the Head Start program is not worth the billions of dollars it receives.

I understand not wanting to invest in a program which was found to have no lasting results (of what was measured). Though let us not forget that the issue isn’t whether or not to invest in young children — investing in young children may be the most efficacious way to spend education dollars. This issue then is how we are investing in young children. We ought to be making sustained investments to figure out what program elements produce the best results, and for whom.

Bierman and her colleagues suggest that, in part, the nature of the intervention is to blame for the fading of positive, initial gains. They say that the transient results may be due to the quality of the program.

I agree that improvements made to a given program can make for more lasting results, however, there’s an additional point to be made: people misunderstand the implications of fadeout. Fadeout has been framed to mean that a given program did not achieve what was intended, despite the fact that just the opposite may be true.

I will go into further detail about this when I talk about fadeout below, but first, I’ll review the Bierman study.

The Current Study

Bierman and her colleagues understand that high-quality early childhood education yields positive results. In this study, they go a step further and attempt to elucidate which may be the active ingredients that enable programs to produce positive, long-term outcomes.

Toward that end, the researchers designed a study with one control group and two experimental groups to receive different interventions in preschool. Then, they assessed the students years later when they neared the end of second grade. Below is a simplified summary of the groups and assessments.

Group 1 – The Control Group

Students in this group attended their Head Start center, just as they would have otherwise.

Group 2 – Added Classroom Program

Students in this group also attended their Head Start center, though their classrooms benefitted from an added curriculum that promoted the development of children’s social-emotional, language, and literacy skills.

Group 3 – Added Classroom Program and Home Visits

In addition to the added curriculum that the students in group 2 received, the parents of students in group 3 also received home visits. During these home visits parents were shown how to encourage their children’s literacy growth and develop their children’s learning and self-control.

The Assessments

Three years later, when the students were finishing second grade, the researchers assessed the students’ mental health and academic outcomes via teacher reports, student self-reports, and assessments of reading and math skills.

Results

Group 1 Vs. Group 2

Relative to children in the control group, those in a Head Start classroom with the added curriculum showed improved mental health on four out of five teacher-rated measures: classroom participation, social competence, student–teacher relationships, and reduced peer problems. These students also showed near-significant improvements on the fifth measure: learning behaviors. These students also saw improvements in their perceptions of their own social competence.

These students did not appear to benefit academically from the added curriculum.

Group 2 Vs. Group 3

Adding home visits did not further improve any of the mental health measures as rated by the teachers, above and beyond the gains that the children experienced due to the added curriculum alone. Though these children experienced enhanced perceptions of their own social competence, in addition to reduced perceptions of peer problems.

Interestingly, students who received the added curriculum and whose parents received home visits showed improved results on three of the five academic measures (sight words, reading skills, and math skills), with near significant improvements in a fourth measure (letter-word identification).

In brief: the additional class prompted mental health benefits, whereas the home visits yielded additional mental health and academic benefits.

What Have We Learned

Parents matter

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: work through the parents. The current study produced the best results when parents were purposefully encouraged and enabled to bolster their children’s learning.

I feel we have yet to truly harness the influential power of the parents. Studies testing this notion continue to show promising results, and I am convinced that the purposeful design and application of programs meant to build the capacity of caretakers will yield impactful results. These positive effects will be compounded when combined with high-quality, targeted curricula and tailored experiences for young children.

Fadeout

I’d like to make two points about fadeout.

My first point is that the fading out of initial gains brought about from a preschool intervention is not the rule. Because the academic gains achieved by Head Start do not last does not mean that an early intervention’s academic gains cannot last. As we see with the present study, the intervention made improvements to the program and was thus able to bring about sustained change.

Whether or not positive results are attained at all, and whether or not these results last, is completely contingent on each individual’s experience with the given program. Different programs will yield different results with different individuals, the effects of which will last varying durations with each participant. Programs will fare better when they meet children’s individual needs.

The second point I’d like to make regarding fadeout is the following: in order for there to be fadeout, gains must have been made initially. And if gains were made initially, the program worked! Is it the fault of the intervention for not creating gains that are present years later, or is it the fault of the subsequent years of schooling for not maintaining those gains?

Allow me to draw a parallel. You, a novice runner, decide you’re going to run a marathon. You hire a trainer. This trainer assesses your abilities, designs a day-by-day training program for you, and shows up every day to motivate you to do that day’s activities. Within a few months, you’re on pace to run the entire marathon in sub-eight-minute miles. All you need to do is stick with the program.

But, a couple months before the marathon your trainer has to move away and can no longer work with you. So, you hire another trainer. This new trainer shows up everyday with a different progression of activities for you to do, to which you completely commit. However, over the subsequent weeks, you notice your mile time is slipping. Your time is not substantially improving, even though you do all the activities this new trainer has prescribed. Finally, on marathon day, you run the entire race but your average mile time is just over nine minutes.

Would you say it is the fault of the first trainer that your initial gains did not last? Saying that an early childhood program does not make an impact because students’ grades are no better off three years after the fact, in a sense, is saying just that. Providing high-quality early experiences (your first trainer), followed by suboptimal grade school experiences (your second trainer), might not yield stellar long-term results. Surprise!

Learning happens on a continuum. Experiences build on experiences. High-quality early childhood experiences will set an individual up to make the most out of the following experiences (and studies have shown that these experiences alone leave individuals better off across the lifespan). However, high-quality experiences must also follow in order to make the most of the foundation that has already been laid. Early childhood education is powerfully formative, though it is only the beginning.

Conclusion

When he announced the creation of the Head Start program in 1965, President Johnson said, “We set out to make certain that poverty’s children would not be forevermore poverty’s captives.” President Johnson’s intention of improving people’s lives by investing in them when they’re young was insightful, even though the program may have been lacking. Bierman and her colleagues also note that reducing discrepancies across the population through early intervention would be “highly strategic for public health.”

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, 47% of children age 5 years or younger are living in low-income households (link). While early childhood education is not poverty’s panacea, research has shown that quality programs can make a substantial, lifelong impact. Further, improving caretakers’ capacities will only compound the benefits reaped from providing high-quality early childhood education, making for sustained gains in academics and in life. Lastly, if we are to capitalize on high-quality early experiences, they must be followed by more high-quality experiences. Neglecting all of this is choosing to pass up on potential.

References

Bierman, K. L., Heinrichs, B. S., Welsh, J. A., Nix, R. L., & Gest, S. D. (2017). Enriching preschool classrooms and home visits with evidence‐based programming: sustained benefits for low‐income children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 58(2), 129–137. [link]

Early, D., Barbarin, O., Bryant, D., Burchinal, M., Chang, F., Clifford, R., … & Kraft-Sayre, M. (2005). Pre-kindergarten in eleven states: NCEDL’s multi-state study of pre-kindergarten and study of state-wide early education programs (SWEEP). Preliminary Descriptive Report. NCEDL Working Paper. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. [link]

Puma, M., Bell, S., Cook, R., Heid, C., Broene, P., Jenkins, F., … & Downer, J. (2012). Third grade follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study final report, OPRE Report # 2012-45, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [link]

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